Dodd-Frank

As the three-day U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit got underway here Monday, anti-corruption activists urged President Barack Obama to prod a key U.S. agency to issue long-awaited regulations requiring oil, gas, and mining companies to publish all payments they make in countries where they operate.

Three years after the passage of landmark legislation aimed at strengthening regulation of major U.S. companies, one of the most criticised disparities characterising today's corporate culture – the outsized compensation offered to top executives – continues to grow.

A U.S. federal judge has upheld a key regulatory provision aimed at ensuring that the profits from products mined in central Africa are not used to benefit armed groups, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

A federal judge here on Tuesday struck down a key new regulatory provision that would require large U.S.-listed extractives companies to disclose payments made to foreign governments, a rule that rights groups had long pushed as a way to cut down on corruption in developing countries.

With casualties in the long-running conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) now surpassing every conflict since World War II, U.S. policymakers and advocates are stepping up campaigns to raise awareness and push legislation aimed at encouraging new negotiations, assisting in government reforms, and pressuring the neighbouring countries that have propped up the DRC’s government.

Following last week’s approval of U.S. Senate bills that critics say would weaken a major financial reform law known as Dodd-Frank, watchdog groups here are cautioning that banks deemed “too big to fail” still pose a risk to U.S. and international economic security.

The media did their best to make the U.S. presidential election look important, the altar on which democracy is built. But there has been a problem ever since the Supreme Court legalised unlimited campaign spending (six billion dollars this year), thereby authorising one more freedom of expression, called "commercial speech" even though much of this speech is libellous, often neither true nor relevant.